Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Guest Post: The Ladies from Craftbaby

At Craftbaby, we are all about embracing the active crafting community, so every month we host four craft challenges with great prizes and giveaways. Each of our challenges is a designed with the busy mom/working gal in mind - so you have a full month to get your projects completed and submit them. It's like Craft Wars without the stress!
We also offer sponsorship for every challenge - all you have to do is provide the prize (worth $25+) and we do all the rest! If you're interested in sponsoring your very own challenge - it's FREE, email us at contact@craftbaby.com. Check out some of the great projects Craftbaby members have entered, and visit our blog too! Looking forward to seeing all of your awesome projects over at Craftbaby!

Let's face it - July 4th is like the summer-climax; it's halfway between "schools-out" and "schools-back," and the only legit day we get off of work. Splashy pool parties, manly barbequing (beer koozies, check!) and backyard, barely legal fireworks. You get to know your neighbors, you wear a cute, summery outfit (or bikini, go you!) and you flirt with your "better" half. What better way to spend a day?
At Craftbaby, we thought we'd piece together a festive, patriotic tablescape for ya. We know it's the day-of, but it would be weird if we did like a Halloween how-to or just ignored that it was July 4th altogether. So let's celebrate this day together!

Most of our ingredients for this setting came from Michael's, Target, Joann's or our neighbor's curbside trash treasure trove - so you can totally recreate the look on a dime. We wanted to not only give you the final yumminess, but also give you a taste of how we brought it all together.
It was total serendipity (read: we're not that good) - we were about to break out the boring old cafeteria-style table for this shoot when this fabulous dresser on my neighbor's curb caught our eye. The neighbor thought it was funny we wanted his grandmother's trash. We thought it was funny he was throwing it out.

Below is a behind-the-scenes photo to show you our set-up. For these photos, we needed to take into account a) hanging our lanterns and b) the excruciatingly hot, bright Florida sun, so we pitched our craft fair tent and started adding:

Notice the red bike off to the left side - a prop we decided against using, mostly out of laziness: neither one of us felt like threading streamers through those spokes (a la Martha Stewart). Did I mention it was hot? I mean, 1pm South Florida middle-of-the-summer heat. Seriously. Remind us not to do that again. You can also peep our ladder and the concrete-filled buckets (they're black) we used as stilts to raise the tent out of our photoshoot but still keep it shady. Together, we're kind of like MacGyver. Or maybe MacGruber depending on whose judging.

So, here's the table all scape'd out after we arranged, re-arranged and referenced the golden ratio:

And here's the table after we decided we didn't like that set-up and dug around for scrap burlap (Joann's Fabrics) to brighten things up.

Let's get closer in on some of those details, shall we? ENHANCE!

Did I mention we hired an art director for this photoshoot?
He was very quiet and observant until he saw there were cupcakes.

Whipping cream, vanilla & sugar - owned but who has whipping cream just lying around? Liz's southern-blooded husband. "For coffee." He stares cholesterol right in the face and laughs and drinks his full-cream coffee.

White dishes - owned. See "wedding gifts" in paragraph 4.

Random patriotic props - Target $1 area - $3

Total: about $85
That might sound a bit expensive. But let's take a moment here and just talk this through. If you're anything like us, you HATE to waste - and you take any opportunity to return (eh-hem, cough) lightly-used items to the store. So, when we take that into consideration, let's knock off about $20. Now, don't forget, we got about 5 days worth of dessert here too... and a pretty, patriotic flower arrangement that will make Liz's 99-year-old aunt VERY happy since she doesn't have to water it.
So let's take a deep breath and check out that beautiful set-up again:
If you're out there right now soaking up the sun, drinking margaritas - or some other cool summer drink - snacking your heart and out spending quality time with your family, more power to you. When you do find your way back here, tell us about your July 4th adventures. See any awesome hostess ideas? Did you do your own tablescape, or see a great one out somewhere?

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